Five for Friday- first of the summer

Happy summer friends!  She may be at the beach, but I'm still linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five for Friday!

 I got together with my friend and coworker Beth to help her start working on making clipart!!! I am so excited for this! She is super talented and not only can she draw but she is SUPER crafty and made these adorable digraphs for me:

 Based on some feedback we got earlier in the week, I think she might make these electronically and sell them on TPT!  I'll let you know when that is accomplished!  Aren't they awesome!  She just has to make WH now.  You can see the post HERE.
 

 Went and played Topgolf with another friend/coworker Kristin this week.  Had a blast and actually had a high score for myself!!

 Got together with ANOTHER friend/coworker, Andrea, yesterday :-) We have been attending the same university, George Mason University, for 2 1/2 years working on our Masters BUT I had never been to the university!  I have 4 weeks of class there this summer and she had a parking pass for me (SCORE!!) so we went over and walked around.  Love it! (but not looking forward to class...)

I'll officially be done with my Masters on July 25 though!!!!!!!

 The in laws are coming into town tomorrow and staying for a week.  On Sunday we are going to the Quicken Loans National and HOPEFULLY Tiger will make the cut because every time we have tried to see him he isn't playing... 

 I have been making this little girl TIRED this week with extra walking.  And I tried to cut her nails, but she is being SUPER stubborn this time... SO it's off to the pet store right after posting this so they can chop them for me! HA!

Make sure you jump back over to Doodle Bugs Teaching for more Five for Friday fun!  Have a wonderful weekend!

Tried and True Thursday- Throwing Back to Center Organization

Today I'm linking up with 2 linkies thanks to The Teaching Tribune and Second Grade Shenanigans to bring you a tried and true method I use to keep my centers and their materials organized. It is also a throwback post from the fall.

I originally posted this as #5 on my Five for Friday post back on October 4th of last year.  Enjoy!!

 I was able to get us officially organized for centers this week (finally!!!).  It's a new system for me and I needed a bit to get used to it, but so far so good!  I have a center chart for math and one for literacy so everyone knows where to go:

Then, each table/work area is labeled with the matching letter so kids are not confused where the center is:

Lastly, we keep our centers stored in an organized fashion with little labels so every child knows where they go!  I just added this today and it was a LIFESAVER!  No one was asking me "Where does this go??" during cleanup- THANK THE LORD!

Monday Made It- Digraph Posters

Hello friends!! It is officially summer for me! YAY!! To celebrate I am linking up with Tara from 4th Grade Frolics for my first (and hopefully not only...) Monday Made It of the summer!

Ok, take a look!! How fantastic are these:

So, I have to be honest because I didn't actually make these... :-)  My good friend and team leader, Beth, made these for me for a birthday present.  They are fantastic!!  WH is coming in the future and I am very excited to see it! She handmade these out of paper and they turned out so well!!

Here are the individual pictures:

shoes, shark, shovel, shells, shirt, shapes

the, thumb, thermos, thorn, thimble, three

chocolate, cheese, cherries, chalk, chain, chick, chair

I am going to laminate these babies and use them next year when we introduce the 4 digraphs! 

Now I need your help/input/advice!!!
Beth is considering selling her digraph posters BUT we wanted to ask you all first what you think:  Would you be interested in buying something like this?  Would you want a hard (paper) copy or electronic copy to print and cut out yourself?  How much would you pay for a hard copy and/or electronic copy?

Also!
She is *hopefully* going to start making clipart because she is a very talented artist! (and I want to use it to create goodies!!)  Any good websites or blog posts out there that you know of to help her get started??

Thanks for your help friends!!  Hope your summer is off to a good start.  Happy creating!!

Five for Friday- FREEDOM!

I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for a wonderful Five for Friday!!

 I'M DONE!!!!!

We watched Frozen because I had not seen it yet and it is GREAT!  Love Olaf!!

Had a FABULOUS promotion ceremony this week!!  We sang You're Wonderful by the fabulous Debbie Clement!  Had some fancy posters to go with our posters.  So cute!!  Here are the posters:

I wanted to show you the performance BUT teachertube is NOT working for me... erg :-(

 We celebrated the day after our party by popping the leftover balloons with our bottoms!  Check out this girl's face post pop!

 FREEDOM!!!!  

Happy Friday friends!  Time for a VERY happy hour!! Have a great summer!!

Monday Meet Up: Me!

Today I'm linking up with The Teaching Tribune for their meet me linky party because I need a little fun in my life!!

 I'm not on summer break yet (9 more days....) but wanted to have fun with everyone who is!!

 I Teach: kindergarten!! I love kindergarten :-)

I Have: a wonderful dog named Allie.  We have had her for just over 5 weeks and we are absolutely in love!  We spoil her rotten, but that's ok because she is pretty awesome!  We adopted her and got REALLY lucky- already crate and house trained!  My husband did a great job of teaching her to walk together and now we just gotta break the squirrel trance when walking- which I am getting pretty good at.

I Watch:  way too much tv... But all on DVR to make it go a little faster!  Why watch commercials if you don't need to?

I Listen:  to construction... We moved to a new awesome apartment in January but now they are TEARING UP THE ENTIRE ROAD IN FRONT OF US TO REDO ALL THE PIPES, THEN BUILD A TUNNEL, THEN BUILD OVER THE TUNNEL HIGHWAY THAT'S ALREADY THERE! So, needless to say, we will be moving at the end of our lease (hopefully buying a place!!)

I Read: young adult fiction!  So good!  The stories just pull you in :-)

I do:  way to much...  Right now I am in grade school (collecting data for my last major project), finishing up the school year, and working on the ELL Math summer school curriculum.  UGH!

Can't wait to meet you all! Have fun linking up over at The Teaching Tribune!

Five For Friday- I'm actually blogging!

Happy Friday friends!!  I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for:

 Just to start- can we celebrate the fact that this is my 2nd post this week!!! I haven't been blogging much lately because I've been so busy with work, grad school, curriculum writing for summer school, dog, husband, etc... BUT I'm on a roll this week!

 We planted radishes back at the beginning of April and they were ready to pick this week!!  Everyone got to pick one and then today we cleaned them, sliced them up, and tasted them.  One kid put the whole thing in his mouth and proceeded to yell about how spicy it is!! DUH!!  Some of the kiddos (including me!) loved dipping them in ranch and they each got to pick an extra radish to take home and slice up.

 We have been immersing ourselves in everything Mo Willems!! If you don't know much about him or his books (Pigeon, Elephant and Piggie, Knuffle Bunny) come on back on Tuesday because I'll be blogging about it for a book linky (yes!! another post in the works!!).  Well, we have been working really hard to add in speech bubbles and showing emotions and faces and the kids are doing great! I love this example because you can tell how mad mom is and how "innocent" Malak looks when she says OK!!

"Malak give me a spoon!"  "Ok"

Her story was about her playing when her mom was asking her to set the table and this was the last page.  Love it!

 Most of the boys in my class have created REALLY strong bonds with at least 1 or 2 other boys.  It's really interesting to see.  Usually the girls in my classes do this, but this year it's the boys! Well, these 2 are BEST FRIENDS!!  On Thursday, the birthday boy, Brandon, was trying to sit on Alex's lap during breakfast because "He is my BEST FRIEND!" as he explained.  LOL  Then, this morning, Alex was about to cry because Brandon wasn't at school yet- "Mrs. V, where is Brandon??" (with his sad brown eyes).  It's a little ridiculous.  Well, have you ever read My Friend Feels Sad by Mo Willems??  Elephant is all sad because Piggie is not around but doesn't realize it's Piggie who is dressing up in all these costumes to make Elephant happy.  WELL it reminded me exactly of these 2 boys!!! So I just HAD to take this picture and plan on giving it to them at graduation.

 The mom of the birthday boy in number 4 made Tomales for his birthday (or maybe just a regular Friday night meal- I'm not 100% sure...).  SO, she ran home and got 2 tomales- one for me and one for a coworker Kristin.  Ummmm... AMAZING!!!! We sat in her room with her para and we all just ate.  It was quiet, and delicious, and relaxing, and the perfect way to end Friday.  

Hope you all had a great week.  Only 10 days left!!  HAPPY WEEKEND!!